Posted by Mike on Nov 19, 2009 in Blog, Marketing | Comments Off on Practical Marketing Advice for Your Small Business

Many entrepreneurs are absolutely confused when it comes to marketing and branding their company. It really isn’t their fault; they see so many self-proclaimed “experts” out there trying to sell them some new gimmick and may be trying the same things they see large businesses doing with no effect. What are they doing wrong? What makes marketing a small business so much different from marketing a large one?
Marking: Unmasked: Insider’s Tips + Tricks for Success in Small Business Marketing by Erik Wolf (@erikwolf) and Stephanie Frost (@swfrost) of Zero G Creative in Alpharetta, GA cuts...

At a start-up or small company, a business card is your most important piece of printed marketing material. It is generally the first representation of your company (besides yourself) that a person sees. The main exception to this would be if a person finds your website before meeting you (I will talk about this in more detail in a future blog post).
Your business card influences a prospect’s first impressions of your company and may have a lasting effect on them as well. Even to this day, a lot of business cards still wind up in a rolodex or business card binder for later reference....

As a sustainable business (or one trying to increase their sustainability cred.), reducing the amount of printed marketing materials is an ongoing battle. The thought of getting rid of all your printed materials may be tempting but sometimes it is just nice to have a tangible representation of your business to hand to someone. Also, if you just output the same artworks used for your printed materials as PDFs and post them to your website; you miss out on a lot of added functionality that the web has to offer. Your current printed materials have to be adapted to the web.
The goal is to print...

Posted by Mike on Nov 5, 2009 in Projects | Comments Off on School Gardening Guide

Farmer D Organics has teamed up with Rationally Creative and Pattie Baker (Eco Writer) to produce a guide that helps you understand the role that School Gardens play and how to get one at your school. Here is a quick list of what is contained in the guide:
School Gardens Don’t Set a New Standard – They Support the Standards You’ve Already Set
PTA’s National Standards for Family-School Partnerships
Funding Ideas
How Farmer D Sets the Standards in School Gardens
Your School Garden: Easy as 1-2-3
More School Garden Information
You can download the guide here. Feel free to share the...

I was struck with the home-brewing bug last year but in my search for a simple recipe for beer I found out just how easy hard cider was to brew. Hard cider can be made just by combining apple juice and yeast (I cover the basics here). Now that I have tackled several batches of plain hard cider I decided to move on to something a little more complicated. The two variations that I am brewing right now are a flavored Holiday Hard Cider (recipe below) and a Cyser (mead made in apple juice instead of water).
Holiday Hard Cider
5 gallons Apple Juice (pasteurized, no preservatives)
6 cups Maple...